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Written by Glider Onair
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Tuesday, 21 December 1999 |
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Page 3 of 3
Ok, now you have fermenting beverage in a big bottle. What to do? Keep the air lock filled with water. With wine you would rack it (change containers) after 2-4 weeks. And again after every 3 months, till it was 9 months to a year old. Siphon off the wine from one container to a clean sterilized (after you add yeast, make sure that everything that touches your mead is rinsed in that sulphite water!) leaving the dead yeast cells, precipitated grape bits etc. behind. With mead however there tends to be very little precipitate (even less when you boil the honey before hand). So rack whenever it starts to build up on the bottom enough to bother you. Often with a relatively pure mead, this may need done but once or twice. The darker the honey, the longer it needs to be aged to reach the “ideal” mead qualities. A very dark honey may take the lion's share of a decade to properly “ripen”. In all reality, you can bottle it when there is no more air bubbling out of the air lock. Watch the airlock for a few minutes. If you don't see any activity, bottle. Hydrometers are nice, but not absolutely necessary though. Generally, a hydrometer will come with instructions for use.
Bottling is not that difficult. Scrounge a few wine bottles and buy some corks for a dollar or two. A decent corker, which is a necessity, sells for $15-$20. A 5 gallon carboy makes about 23-25 bottles of mead. Screw cap bottles would be an alternative to corks, though this doesn't look as nice, nor seal and preserve as well. You may now drink your mead as you see fit, or age and ripen it further by storing in a cool dark area. Corked bottles should be stored on a slant so that the cork is in constant contact with the liquid.
Pop the cork and enjoy! Remember to send your friend Glider a sample bottle!
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